Tags: occupation

As Israel criticizes Palestinians for their legal resistance against an illegal occupation, illegal Israeli settlers attack Palestinians on a daily basis – often with protection from the Israeli military – and go unpunished. Sometimes they destroy crops, sometimes vehicles; sometimes it’s graffiti; this week a member of the Israeli parliament called for open violence, and settlers obeyed.

A former Birthright trip coordinator and leader’s bold opinion: young Jews on Birthright trips are aware of world events, and shouldn’t have to feel like they’re engaging with a sanitized and whitewashed version of Israel. When tour organizers don’t show them realities like the occupation, they are painting an incomplete and dishonest picture of what’s happening on the ground. Showing and telling the truth will make birthrighters more likely to engage and take action.

Before the birth of modern Israel, Zionist groups – newly arrived in Palestine – engaged in armed struggle against the British military, whom they labelled as “occupiers.” But now that the tables have turned (and the UN has enshrined the right of armed struggle as a vehicle of indigenous liberation) the Israeli occupation refuses to recognize the Palestinian resistance as legitimate.

Israeli military lives lost, while tragic, are sacrifices made willingly by the occupier who is fully aware that the resistance is ongoing.

Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination is a difficult, costly march; yet history teaches there is simply no other choice. Silence is surrender. To be silent is to betray all those who have come before and all those yet to follow.

Elderly women, families, children, and of course young men in the occupied Palestinian territories are regularly treated with brutality by Israeli forces. International laws are in place to protect vulnerable populations, but Israel ignores such laws – and gets away with it. Simple, common decency ought to elicit restraint on the part of the occupier, but does not.

These very brief stories are snapshots of Israeli cruelty between December 15 and 17, 3 days out of the 50+ years of violent occupation which the United States endorses and supports to the tune of over $10 million a day.

The Israeli military has recently been conducting aggressive operations inside the occupied Palestinian West Bank, including in Area A, where the Palestinian Authority is supposed to be in full control.
Israel continues to prolong and entrench the now 50+-year occupation, citing the need for security; in reality the occupation and its injustice are the cause of Palestinian resistance, not the result of Palestinian violence.

Israeli forces prepare to demolish a school in Hebron, West Bank on 11 July 2018 [DonnaBaranski-Walker/Twitter] Children in occupied West Bank schools are attacked and traumatized on a regular basis, as a matter of official policy. These are stories from just November and ten days in December (subsidized by American tax dollars). compiled by If…

Marc Lamont Hill, in Nazareth 2014. screenshot from Vimeo video. As is often the case with proponents of justice for Palestinians, Marc Lamont Hill was watched closely by Israel partisans as he spoke before the UN last week. They took a phrase – one phrase – from the speech and threw the rest aside, hoping…

The events of December 4, 2018 in the occupied Palestinian territories would startle most of the world, but US mainstream US media won’t report them: a grieving father is unable to get Israel to take responsibility for just 4 of the 1,400 deaths from Operation Cast Lead; an Israeli arms testing facility is about to move in on Bedouin land; a mentally disabled man is killed; 24 Palestinians are abducted; and 5 buildings (and livelihoods of 5 families) are demolished.

Palestinians in Gaza are dealing with more fallout from the blockade – and their protest against it. Now in addition to thousands of gunshot wounds from Israeli snipers, and their accompanying disabilities and amputations, many are at risk of infection. The healthcare sector is lacking in supplies thanks to import restrictions; patients can not go abroad for treatment thanks to visa restrictions.

Booking.com needs to take a stand against occupation by de-listing properties located on stolen land in Israeli settlements The popular global tourism company Airbnb recently announced its decision to de-list properties in illegal Israeli settlements, a move which Human Rights Watch (HRW) praised as “a stand against discrimination, displacement, and land theft.” Now it’s time for Booking.com to…

Palestinians who rely on olive harvests for their livelihood have been terrorized by Israeli settlers since the beginning of the occupation in 1967. Settlers – often guarded or assisted by Israeli military – destroy trees and equipment, steal large quantities of olives, kill livestock, and attack Palestinian farmers.

In the ongoing travesty of justice, some olive groves are only accessible to their Palestinian owners for a few days a year; swaths of farmland has been appropriated by Israel for settlement expansion or military use.

Airbnb is doing the right thing by de-listing properties in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Anti-Defamation League is pushing back – but its arguments fail to hold up to even the mildest scrutiny.

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